Is it possible to change the definition of a word everyone already uses?
Finding an answer to this question has become the single most important mission for BitTorrent Inc., a company that has begun to fight back against the inconvenient fact that its very name is synonymous with the Internet’s most popular crime: illegal file sharing. Under the guidance of Matt Mason, author of The Pirate’s Dilemma and BitTorrent’s executive director of marketing, the company has a plan for how to edit the dictionary of the Internet lexicon.
The highest profile example of BitTorrent’s “rehabilitation,” as Mason calls it, came earlier this month with an enigmatic billboard campaign in New York City, Los Angeles, and the company’s hometown, San Francisco. Stark white with bold, black lettering, the first set of billboards imposed onlookers with contentious messages that included “Your data should belong to the NSA,” “Artists need to play by the rules,” and “The Internet should be regulated.” There was no indication of who commissioned their creation. Until October 8, that is, when the messages all flipped: “The Internet should be regulated people-powered”; “You data should belong to the NSA you.” And at the bottom of each: “BitTorrent.”
“We could shut down BitTorrent accounting tomorrow, and Internet piracy would still exist.”
“To use billboards to really introduce ourselves just seemed like a great way to completely put our brand and the technology in a completely different context,” says Mason. “Just in case that wasn’t enough, we wanted to dispel everybody’s preconceived idea of what BitTorrent was. So we started with these messages – these unbranded messages – that represented all the things that we’re not, all the things that we’re against.”
Another thing BitTorrent is adamantly against, says Mason: Online piracy. This may come as some surprise considering that BitTorrent, the protocol, is the Internet’s most widely used technology for downloading copyrighted content illegally. “BitTorrent” or just “torrenting” means piracy – or just getting movies and music for free – to millions of people. It is this misconception, as the company believes it to be, that stands in the company BitTorrent’s way.
Created in 2001 by Python developer Bram Cohen, the BitTorrent protocol is a peer-to-peer technology that allows people to easily share and download large files without the need for central servers. Instead of downloading entire files from one place, users download bits and pieces from multiple users – a method that reduces download times to a fraction of what it would be using the server method.
According to Mason, Cohen designed BitTorrent because he believed that HTTP – the protocol used to serve websites to your browser – would be inadequate as a delivery mechanism for a future Internet, where large file transfers would be the norm. Instead, he envisioned a decentralized ‘Net that directly connected users to each other and to each other’s files.
“He wasn’t thinking about music. He wasn’t thinking about movies,” says Mason. “He was thinking about data, and he was thinking about the general shape of the Internet.”